Mexico - Tulum, Palenque, Yaxchilan & Bonampak

23 July 2010

Tulum

We met up again with Scott from LA and the three of us got the bus from Playa del Carmen to the Tulum ruins which are a great set of ruins on the coast.  The site is pretty much a square with massive defensive walls around three sides and the sea on the fourth side.  It was absolutely overrun with people which was quite a surprise as none of the other sites had been particularly busy.  There were some really cool temples and some great carvings, mainly of the "Descending Man" which is possibly though to be homage to the bee which was apparently revered.

Tulum

The Descending Man (Tulum)

Corner or a building at Tulum - would have been amazing when painted

From there the three of us got the night bus up to Palenque, an enormous site much further inland.  Scott (being from the US) was a massive chicken about travelling around Mexico on a bus in the night and hardly slept, but it was fine!

False arches at Palenque

At the Palenque ruins we got a guide which was nice as he explained quite a lot about the construction of the stone false arches which created the ceilings of all rooms.  Each side of the arch will stand independently, but it means they can't really span much of a distance and the maximum room width was therefore about 2m.  It made for some dark small spaces.  Scott found a small clay head in the rubble up the side of one temple and I got in a major huff with him when he refused to put it back or give it in to the museum.  And the guide suggested he keep it too.  I was raging.  So that evening we all drank a large amount of Mezcal (cactus spirit of which tequila is a fancy subset) with chilli salt.  Particularly fun as Lou didn't know what Mezcal was up until that point!

Palenque grand plaza

Carving at Palenque

Scott then finally decided he'd had enough of us and left and Lou and I had a chilled couple of days in Palenque town getting my backpack fixed (again!) and doing laundry etc.

We arranged a tour down to Flores in Guatemala through our hostel which managed to get us to where they said they would take us, but didn't tell us anything along the way so we kept arriving in places with all the wrong stuff and no idea what we were supposed to be doing.

The first stop was at a site called Yaxchilan which involved a trip on a longboat down the river that borders that part of Guatemala & Mexico.  We had no idea where we were being sent (we'd already changed buses a few times by this point) so had our full daypacks (computer etc) to carry, but no bugspray so we were eaten alive.  This didn't improve our moods!

Roofcomb at Yaxchilan

Yaxchilan was a nice wee site though.  You had to enter the main square by walking through pitch black, bat filled tunnels under one temple which was pretty cool.  The howler monkeys were really going for it (we thought the noise they were making was fake for a while as it was so strange) and there was a nice assortment of wee temples and ball courts and the like.  There was also a massive temple with a huge roofcomb on it at the top of a very high, steep hill. Despite the cloying heat and heavy packs we climbed up there for amazing views out over the jungle.

Stela at Bonampak

After lunch we were driven off in a taxi to a site called Bonampak which is famous for its murals.  Lou and I took a leisurely stroll around all the carved stelae and the buildings to finish at the temple with the murals only to find that they'd been closed for the day (our fantastic tour company having failed to mention this).  Lou was in such a huff, refusing to even look through the mesh doors at the murals, that the guards took pity on us and opened the three rooms just for us.  They were absolutely amazing, vividly colourful stucco murals covering all the surface of three smallish rooms.  The style was similar to Egyptian paintings with people in profile.

Murals at Bonampak

We stayed a night in the jungle where the local Lacandon people (recognisable by their long hair, fringes and white smocks - male & female) were having some sort of religious ceremony (complete with Coca-cola to burp out the bad spirits) followed by a massive knees up.  It was quite cross-cultural with some people in Lacandon dress & some in western dress, indigenous religion crossed with catholic, and a pinata (papier mache shape filled with sweeties, hung up and beaten with a baseball bat by someone wearing a blindfold till it bursts and the sweeties fall out) to finish.

The morning had a moment of excitement when I noticed a 3" scorpion on the front of my shorts.  Luckily a local came and swiped it off me and then killed it.

From there we were taken back to the river and carried downstream this time to the Guatemalan border post and on to Flores.....